


i've laced up both my boots

by aphrodite_mine



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-05
Updated: 2011-10-05
Packaged: 2017-10-24 08:22:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/261191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aphrodite_mine/pseuds/aphrodite_mine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moira goes undercover, and discovers what that word really means.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i've laced up both my boots

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Joanne_c](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joanne_c/gifts).



> Thanks to betas prozacpark and majesdane.

\--

Hellfire Club. It's exclusive, but nothing's too exclusive for a girl in lacy underthings.

Moira McTaggert hasn't gotten this far (and _this_ far isn't so far at all, she considers) into the CIA by doing things in halves. The place is easy enough to navigate: pretty ladies fawning over the best and brightest -- Moira shudders, makes mental notes of the faces she recognizes. Private booths, ah ha! She sits down quick and tugs the curtains closed. One breath, two. There; she's collected. (It comes easy, these days.)

What to do now, though? She knows he's here, but... Moira sets her hand on the spindle, flips it up and presses. It's the first moment she wonders if she might have gotten in this a little too far. Her head settles, she opens the curtain. And here, a much more likely location for answers. She does the obvious, goes for the desk drawers. Gold.

There's a low rumbling and Moira looks up, her jaw caught hanging slack. _Shh_ , she tells herself, hands freezing on the desktop.

A woman, no one Moira's seen before -- she would have remembered. She's clad, barely so, in white, the shiny fabric stretched to cover her breasts. She stops in front of Moira, her back straight, her blonde hair perfectly coiffed. "I've never seen you before," she says, placing careful emphasis on each syllable (Moira thinks, _That feeling is mutual, then_ ). Moira watches her lips move, thanking whatever God she knows that she slipped the folder beneath the desk when she heard the sound.

"I'm new," Moira answers, though an explanation wasn't asked for. It's a symptom of being in the presence of someone she's quite possibly afraid of (she isn't sure yet), in a situation she's most definitely afraid of (she's sure of that, now). Training kicks in, though they never trained her for something like this (call it female intuition, maybe), and Moira steps back, away from the desk, folding her hands in front of her. Modestly.  
As modestly as she can, given her attire.

The woman in white takes a step back, places her gloved hand against Moira's hair, the touch full of static electricity, like lightning. She looks Moira in the eye, appearing almost bored. There's a buzz and a flicker and Moira blinks; the colors are off. "New?" she hums, her mouth turning downward almost imperceptibly. "That's inconvenient."

\--

Later -- far too much later, she figures it out.

\--

Moira's hand flies out to latch fingers around Emma's wrist. "God, oh God," and her composure is gone, even the memory of professionality dims and flares in Emma's eyes. The darkness there, pulsing, a finger cold against Moira's clit, the fire that spins through her and bursts, caught in a thousand reflections.

There, that first glimpse of diamond skin, caught in the flicker of her eyelids, a demon shrouded in smoke, a hurricane, her breath catching in her throat.

\--

"Emma Frost," the woman says, extending her hand. "You can call me Ms. Frost, if you wish to." Moira takes Emma's hand with her own, offers a firm shake. "We normally run quite a well-oiled machine here. I'm surprised a beauty like you slipped through the cracks."

Moira finds her cheeks heating up, even though she can't quite tell if _Ms. Frost_ is being sincere or sarcastic; that little twitch of her upper lip giving nothing away. "I was told I was a sort of last minute fill." She scrambles to keep the lies straight, filing this one away.

"Then you'll have missed the training." Emma doesn't wait for confirmation, just slips her hand up and around Moira's wrist, tugging her forcefully out from behind the desk and through a doorway that Moira somehow missed in her initial perusal of the room, into a sparse hall, lined with chairs. Moira adds it all up; the subtle carvings on the chair backs, the artwork on the wall; Picasso reproductions. It means something. It means something more than just a fancy club for the elite and sleazy. Moira can't quite put her finger on it.

Moira nods carefully, rubbing at her wrist. "I'm a fast learner," she finds herself saying, the words slipping up out of her throat.

\--

Moira isn't sure how to broach the topic of her training. Or rather, the manner in which Ms. Frost is addressing it. The girls stay on premises, it's been explained, there's a kind of barracks in the basement level. "I'm surprised this wasn't mentioned to you in your hiring." Emma's eyes are cold, her touch rough.

"There's a lot that wasn't mentioned in my hiring." Moira turns around, too late to be modest, but still clinging to the idea that she needs to protect some part of herself from this woman. She shrugs into a dressing gown -- black, with lace trim. The counterpart to Ms. Frost's glaringly white accessories.

Emma continues, turning Moira back to face her, her hands running over the cool silk, straightening and adjusting. "Clients of the Hellfire Club expect a certain caliber of woman attending to them." She brushes her hand against the underside of Moira's left breast, flicks at her nipple. "The men who come here aren't interested in your intellect."

Moira forgets, and continues forgetting what she's here to accomplish. She looks in Emma's eyes, at the sharp blue crystal, and her mind flies open.

\--

Emma knows more than she's letting on, but Moira supposes that's the way things work in the real world. She's known more than she's been letting on for years. She just doesn't know what Emma knows.

It's a problem.

\--

She places her fingers against Emma's lips, feels the warm breath that slips through. Emma reaches for her wrists again, but Moira shakes free. "Let me. I have to know how to please a client, don't I?" She watches the light flicker across Emma's eyes, the small nod. "Good," Moira continues, pressing her lips together in concentration.

Ms. Frost's brassiere features a front hook, undone with a twist of fingers.

"I dare say, you'll rarely come across a client of my caliber." Emma manages to look bored while Moira works her tongue against the bared skin.

It's impulse, more than anything, that causes Moira to look up, slide her hands quickly around Emma's neck, tugging gently at her hair, and press her lips against Ms. Frost's. The one thing Moira hasn't been instructed on -- "A kiss is far too intimate. Far too dangerous." -- and the one thing, perhaps, that Emma wasn't expecting.

Something slips, and while her lips are moving, Moira sees a flicker of a reflection of diamond, a world, devastated by fire.

"It's not the clients I'm worried about."


End file.
